Pull-tab bottle openings have been around for a long time. We see them making an occasional resurgence, showing up on unusual applications like beer bottles. Just a few years back, Tuborg was pitching this type of opening as a cool innovation in the European beer market.

The application of a pull-tab opening on Otsuka’s 100 ml micro-portion ファイブミニ Fibe-Mini is worthy of a look.

While there are many varieties of odd combinations of opening technologies and bottle formats in the Japanese market, we found out that this particular execution works, and works well.

First Impressions

As is typical with Japanese packages, the execution is flawless with tremendous attention to detail.

Due to its small size, the package has little branding canvas. Nevertheless, it stands out at the point-of-purchase (POP).

Package Usability

As with all micro-portion packages targeting adults, the package is too small to hold in adult hands. Drinking is also uncomfortable due to the smaller package size. The opening is not reclosable, and does not need to be due to the size of the portion.
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Concept Screening

Concept screening is one of the most critical steps in the consumer centric innovation process. At this stage, the innovation team is responsible to make decisions on which concepts are taken forward, or parked.

As a first step, the project team collects input from different sources and builds scenarios that match the project brief in the best possible way.

There are multiple factors in judging a concept such as technical and financial feasibility, deployment timeframe, and consumer value as determined from consumer testing. Please see the previous installment in this series of articles.
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Gizmodo reports a new glass shaped wine package by Wine Innovations via CrunchGear.

First Impression

This is indeed a consumer centric innovation. It is significantly superior to drinking wine from carton containers offered in some countries.

Any Cons?

Wine being an alcoholic beverage, there is little concern regarding the asepticity of the product. Regarding the oxygen transfer rate through the foil, seal, and the body of the package, the package is suboptimal. However, as we covered in our article about cork, controlled oxygen transmission is considered a plus for wine. Therefore the package and the product match well.
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Today, we upgraded to WordPress 3.0, and we were briefly down during the process. Thanks to the WordPress team for great software.

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We have come across a new milk bottle design for Al Rawabi, by Packlab Partners. [Thanks to Kristina / ambalaj.se.]

This design, while touching many aspects of good package design, highlights the creative tension between good design, and good usability.

Initial Observations

We assume that this is an HDPE package. There is a built-in handle in larger sizes. Smaller sizes, despite lacking the handle, maintain the visual design language of the larger sizes. There are some features at the bottom that are not detailed in the write-up, but we assume they are related to distribution crates.

Design Language

The strong design language used is consistent with the milk’s wholesome image. The package (or at least the prototype) appears to be a bit glossier than it needs to be, as we know that food categories like milk and eggs benefit from matte finishes. This design can help Al Rawabi build a brand language for their product portfolio.
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The Wall Street Journal reports today that Nestlé is suing Sara Lee for patent infringement on its Nespresso capsules.

Nespresso machines and capsules have been around for 25 years. As a business, Nespresso has grown to $2.6 Billion, annually.
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Heineken introduced customized bottle designs, not unlike what Jones Cola did several years ago. You can design, share, and order your six-pack online for €29.99. Design yours here. Find our design here. [Fast Company]

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Product usability is important in any product category. For high involvement products like computers and cell phones, product usability can make or break a company’s future.

As a company long obsessed with product usability, Apple is a great example. Similarly, the lack of proper product usability can put a company out of business. Consider the usability of a car or an airplane. Mistakes in usability end up costing lives. An airplane cargo door that looks closed, but has not actually closed properly, may lead to a crash. (This indeed happened. See the cargo door problem section in this McDonnell Douglas DC-10 Wikipedia entry.)
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Plastiki is continuing its voyage across the Pacific ocean. They are now on their 85th day, near Tuvalu. The 60 foot boat was built from used plastic bottles. You can watch founder David De Rothschild talk about the endeavor above. You can find more pictures on flicker.

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We had covered the Sun Chips compostable chip package on April 25, 2010. You can find the review here and its advertisement here. One of the areas of interest with that package was its matte finish, which we had praised.

There are a number of packages with even more matte finishes arriving in the marketplace, typically packing chips or popcorn. We picked a package of Angie’s Kettle Corn and ran our analysis.
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